Water churns with mindless ferocity beneath the hull, lolling the ship up and down in rhythmic motion. The crests of black waves to starboard are briefly transformed to brilliant emerald as the setting sun cuts through them. Dark clouds far to port light up with the electricity of a brewing storm.

I pause to take in this panorama from my perch high in the crow’s nest atop the main mast. Then I return my attention to my task, scanning the horizon with a spyglass. I see rocky islands. An outpost. The upturned bow of a half-submerged shipwreck.

And then I catch sight of something more interesting. It’s obscured by growing fog, and partially hidden behind a gathering of rocks, but there’s no mistaking it. A ship. Sails raised, anchor dropped. I spin round and ring the bell behind me. “I’ve got them!” I half shout into my headset while whipping out my compass. “A galleon! To the northwest!”

Silence for a moment.

Then I hear our helmsman, a Brit, say, “Good eyes. Definitely a ship.” I feel the boat begin a slow turn as he spins the wheel.

“Angle the sails to catch the wind,” another of our company of four crewmen says, a Brazilian with a light accent. “It’s payback time.”

Sea of Thieves is an ambitious and risky bet for both Rare, the storeyed British studio behind its conception and design, and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox division, which has long been in need of a winning new exclusive property to join its popular but aging Halo, Gears of War, and Forza franchises.

Sitting around a table with a group of international journalists Microsoft has flown in to the studio’s picturesque rural headquarters about 30 minutes outside of Birmingham, the game’s makers make no secret of the expectations heaped upon their cooperative online pirate simulation. The phrase “the next big game for Xbox” pops up more than once.

Studio chief Craig Duncan cuts right to the chase. “We want Sea of Thieves to be the friendliest, most accessible multiplayer game ever made,” he says with confidence. “I want people to still be playing five or even 10 years from now. We’re in this for the long game.”

This might seem like hubris, but his assurance is at least partially founded in numbers.

When Sea of Thieves entered a beta test period earlier this year, the results were immediate and impressive. Players began streaming their play sessions on Twitch, a popular online service that in many ways measures the pulse of modern game audiences. The game amassed 40 million live streaming viewing hours in just seven days. It quickly climbed the viewing ranks to become the site’s top streamed game, surpassing longstanding Twitch juggernauts including League of Legends and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

“When we overtook League of Legends it was like, f–king hell,” says the game’s executive producer, Joe Neat, with a giddy smile. “People were high-fiving each other in the hallways.” This positive reaction from the public helped validate the team’s hard work over the last three-and-a-half years. Could this be the game that finally brings Rare back into the conversation?

Rare was once a darling developer for Nintendo platforms, thanks to beloved classics including GoldenEye 007, Donkey Kong Country, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. It’s done good business for Microsoft since being acquired by the American giant in 2002, but without delivering much in the way of iconic new properties. After attempting to reboot some of its past franchises, including Perfect Dark and Banjo Kazooie, the studio went to work developing sports games for the now abandoned Kinect motion sensor. It’s safe to say the team of around 200 developers was ready to get back to making the kinds of games that make studios famous.

A small group within Rare began brainstorming new ideas in private in 2014. The concept that quickly gained the most traction had a pirate theme and a strong cooperative multiplayer angle. They thought it worked, but it wasn’t until a group of executives from Redmond – including Xbox chief Phil Spencer – came to the studio to try an early prototype that they began to believe they were on to something special.

“We recorded them playing the game without telling them,” says Neat, smiling as he remembers Spencer’s warm reaction to that early concept. “And then we sent an edited video to them a week later, and told them this is the first shared experience in Sea of Thieves. And I can honestly say I’ve never had more confidence in a game’s vision than I did at that moment.”

Things hadn’t gone according to plan. We’d dropped anchor and swam ashore aiming to find the crew of the ship we’d tracked, but ran into skeletons armed with scimitars instead. They kept us occupied while the crew of the other galleon got back aboard their boat and began raining cannon balls onto our ship. Our one remaining shipside crew member was trying to bail water and patch holes with planks, but it was a losing battle. When a third boat appeared from out of the fog, all seemed lost.

That’s when I came up with a desperate idea. I grabbed a red gunpowder barrel the skeletons had been guarding and leapt into the sea, then swam up to a nearby rock that kept me hidden from one of the circling vessels. As the enemy boat approached I began to hear its crew barking orders at each other over my headset. Faintly at first, then more loudly as it grew closer.

When it sounded like they were right on top of me I swam out from behind the rock and began a mad dash toward the ship, still clutching the barrel. I wanted to tell my crew what I was up to, but decided to keep radio silence so as not to be detected by my nearby enemies. I reached the ship’s ladder and began climbing. Then, just as I was about to crest the deck, a bearded face with an eyepatch looked over the edge, pointed a loaded flintlock at me, and fired.

The world disappeared in a massive explosion.

Sea of Thieves isn’t about levelling up and earning more powerful gear. It’s about emergent stories and shared experiences.

“It’s a canvas where players go on adventures together and create memorable experiences,” says studio head Duncan. “It’s about removing boundaries between players, and providing guided goals that bring players together.”

You can create parties among your friends, or be matched with other players to create a crew of two or four. Once you have your crew, you decide among yourselves what to do and where to go. You might agree to start off on a “voyage” – the game’s terminology for a mission, one of countless lightly curated quests set within a vast open world – but you might just as easily get sidetracked if, say, someone spies the glint of a bottle on a beach, a shipwreck in a cove, or the black sails of another ship full of humans on the horizon (I was told the game is designed so this latter should happen once every 15 or 20 minutes).

Once you’ve claimed booty from one or more of these objectives – and assuming you don’t lose it to the cold sea or rival buccaneers – you can head to an outpost to sell off your treasures and purchase more challenging voyages or a variety of pirate-y duds, from peg legs to brass buckles. Then it starts all over again.

The truly bold thing about Sea of Thieves‘ design is the way in which it keeps its community whole. Downloadable content will be made available to everyone so as not to fracture players into groups of haves and have-nots. And character growth employs a horizontal levelling system, which in non-game designer speak means that one player’s character will never grow beyond another. A master pirate can be matched up with a rookie and they’ll both be evenly prepared to take on whatever they encounter.

At one point the game’s design director, Mike Chapman, led me through a glass tunnel from Rare’s main building into one of the studio’s four developer “barns,” where he showed me a screen displaying a cavern reminiscent of the pirate’s cave near the end of The Goonies, complete with waterfalls, shipwrecks, skeletons, and treasure. Chapman calls this location the “Hideout.” It’s not easy to find, but once you do it’ll become a new base of operations for you, providing access to “legendary” voyages that you can share with your crew, regardless of how experienced they are.

“I can imagine that the first person who finds the Hideout, maybe a couple of weeks after launch, will become almost a celebrity within the community,” says Chapman. “And then people will start sharing what it is and what you need to get there and it will slowly start spreading around the community.”

The possibility of obtaining this sort of prestige is part of what Rare hopes will drive people to keep playing for weeks, months, and even years. That, and the sense of shared adventure. Moments of companionship, teamwork, and humour that feel familiar to the real world but are enhanced by the imaginative possibilities of the game.

As the world fades back into existence, I realize I’m on a ship at the bottom of the sea. Dead. In Davy Jones’ Locker, as it were. And I’m not alone. Other dead pirates are with me, chatting amiably with one another. My own death aside, it turns out my scheme to blow up the enemy ship went off as planned. Now all of the casualties of the explosion are hanging out together for a moment, waiting for another chance at the pirate’s life.

After perhaps 30 seconds, the captain’s door on the underwater wreck begins to glow. I step inside, find myself whisked into a portal, and then I’m back at the tavern where the game started.

My crewmates are already there, waiting for me. We pull out our tankards – a good pirate is never without one – and order up some grog from a barmaid. Pints are drunk. We stumble outside toward our ship, which has respawned in a sunny and inviting harbour, but thanks to our recent libations we find ourselves unable to walk steadily enough to remain on the dock. We repeatedly fall off the wooden planks and into the water.

Laughing at each other, we wait to sober up. I sit down on the sand. One of my crewmates pulls out a creaky old concertina accordion and starts playing a pirate ballad while another begins doing a jig. As I watch them I find myself thinking about an island I saw in the distance earlier that morning. I couldn’t say for sure, but it looked like a ship sitting high atop its craggy peaks.

“Guys, I think I know where we should go next…”

Online multiplayer games tend to sink or swim based on the number of people who play. There’s a tipping point which, if reached, opens the floodgates for an ocean of people to begin pouring in.

Understanding this, Microsoft and Rare are including Sea of Thieves in Microsoft’s Game Pass program, a Netflix-like subscription service that provides access to more than 100 games for just $12 per month. Anyone who currently subscribes will be able to start playing Sea of Thieves without spending an extra penny, and anyone who wants to give Sea of Thieves a go who doesn’t currently subscribe to Game Pass can sign up and skip spending $80 on the boxed edition. It’s a clever way to get a bunch of people playing in a hurry.

Another barrier the team is tearing down is the wall that typically sits between platforms. If you’re playing a game on PC, you normally can’t play with friends playing the same game on Xbox One. But Sea of Thieves sits among a rare group of games that fully supports cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows PCs. Making it easier to play with pals is a major advantage for a game designed with friendly cooperative play in mind.

But perhaps the biggest obstacle Rare is trying to tear down is the one that separates people who typically play online games from those who don’t. Online games tend to attract a certain type of player – social spirited and often competitive in nature – while repelling shier and less experienced players, as well as those easily rankled by the kind of foul language and immature behaviours for which online games are notorious. Rare wants both types of players to give Sea of Thieves a shot. And its strategy is to create a sense of fellowship and solidarity among crewmates.

“Our game champions soft skills rather than hard skills,” says lead designer Chapman, explaining that Sea of Thieves is engineered to create a bond among players of all experience and skill levels. “It’s not about how good you are with a controller. It could even be someone’s first multiplayer game. It’s about shared goals and facing emerging threats together. It’s designed so that there is a natural benefit to playing with others. It’s always in your best interest to help your crewmates, and for them to help you.”

To illustrate just how inclusive and accessible Sea of Thieves is, Ted Timmins, the game’s PC design lead, relates a story about a functionally blind player he met at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles last year. “He came over and said he really wanted to play,” says Timmons. “Once we got him on the ship, he grabbed the wheel. You wouldn’t think that someone in his position would be able to navigate, but the sails tend to block the view of whoever’s steering anyway. And Sea of Thieves is about communication. So we told him to go a bit left or a bit right, and he absolutely nailed it every time. It was great. He was a valuable part of the crew.”

It’s this sense of camaraderie and focus on shared experiences that, in the end, might be Sea of Thieves‘ greatest strength. The notion that you needn’t have lightning fast reflexes or the best gear in order to succeed or have fun, but instead simply a willingness to become part of a team standing together to take on, laugh at, and enjoy whatever the game throws at you.

“It’s for anyone who wants to use their imagination,” says executive producer Neat. “Really, it’s for anyone who wants to be a kid again.”

Sea of Thieves will launch March 20, 2018 for Xbox One and Windows PC.

Descriptions of in-game experiences draw from and amalgamate moments spread across several hours spent playing an alpha version of the game at Rare’s headquarters with a mix of developers and journalists.

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